In many surgical procedures, suturing and ligating are required to close wounds. For example, suturing to approximate tissue, which requires the formation of a suture knot for placement of a stitch, is often required for proper healing of lacerations and surgical incisions. Additionally, ligating blood vessels or other tubular organs to be cut within the surgical site is often necessary in numerous surgical procedures. The primary reason for ligating the vessels and/or tubular organs is to maintain the surgical site free of an excess of blood and to reduce blood loss in the patient.
Conventionally, surgeons have performed ligations using ligatures, which are long, relatively straight strands of suture material. The ligature can be secured by forming a suture knot to place a stitch or a knotting element can be threaded onto the ligature after the ligature is looped around the vessel or organs desired to be closed. Unfortunately, forming a knot or threading a knotting element using conventional ligatures is tedious and time-consuming during surgical applications where a surgeon's manual operative techniques within the surgical site are severely restricted.
Thus, there is a need for improved suturing methods and devices.